1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a photographing apparatus, and for example, to a photographing apparatus designed such that a character area is set on the basis of visual axis information from visual axis detecting means for detecting a photographer's visual axis and from among image signals obtained from image taking means, character recognizing process is effected with regard to an image signal corresponding to the character area.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, the development of an optical character recognition (OCR) apparatus as an apparatus for directly inputting printed characters as character information to a computer or the like has taken place. This OCR apparatus reads a printed original (object) by an image scanner (converts it into an image signal), recognizes characters from the image signal obtained by the image scanner and converts them into character information capable of being recomposed as a sentence (hereinafter simply referred to as the character recognizing process). Such an apparatus can process two-dimensional image information such as characters on the surface of paper, but with regard to an object having a depth direction, it is necessary to once photograph it by a camera or the like and convert it into planar image information, and thereafter read it by the image scanner and subject it to the character recognizing process and therefore, this apparatus is cumbersome to operate.
On the other hand, with the tendency of image taking elements toward a higher degree of minuteness, photographing apparatuses such as video cameras and still cameras have come to be used as information inputting means to computers or the like, in addition to their use for commemorative photographing with landscape and persons as objects. A video camera or a still camera is used as information inputting means and an image signal is directly subjected to a character recognizing process, whereby it becomes easy to extract character information from among objects having a depth direction.
However, there has been the problem that if the character recognizing process is effected on the entire image field when the character recognizing operation is to be performed, very much time will be taken for a pre-process such as the extraction of character portions and for example, when this apparatus is applied to an electronic camera or the like, it is difficult to meet the requirement of a user asking for the instantaneousness of photographing.
To solve this problem, the ability of a calculation unit for effecting the character recognizing process could be improved, but it would result in expensiveness of the system.
Also, in the case of an object in which a natural picture such as landscape and characters are mixedly present, or in a case where it is desired to extract only some necessary characters from a great deal of character data, it is unnecessary to effect the character recognizing process in the whole area of the image field.
When for such an object, the character recognizing process is to be effected only on some areas thereof, an image signal once photographed and recorded on a medium is re-inputted to an information processing terminal such as a work station, and moreover an area is designated by the use of a mouse or a keyboard, whereafter the character recognizing process is effected, and this has led to the problem that the entire apparatus becomes bulky and complicated.
Further, when the amount of information of an object is overwhelmingly great for the number of pixels of an image taking element, no drastic solution will be achieved unless a part of the image field is enlargedly photographed and then character recognition is done, and this has also led to the problem that it is difficult to improve the accuracy of recognition.